For individuals who have never learned to ride a bicycle, the experience can be quite intimidating. Whether the pupil is a child or an adult, most fear the prospect of falling off the bicycle or going too fast to maintain control over its operation. Though children may be less cognizant than adults of the potential, latent dangers associated with operating a bicycle, fear is nonetheless prevalent. The psychological impact of this initial fear, coupled with an accompanying lack of concentration, can prolong the learning process. It is not until such time as this fear is overcome, which varies from individual to individual, that riding a bicycle becomes second nature.
In the past, the most prevalent technique employed to teach beginners, particularly youngsters, the skills needed to ride a bicycle was through the use of training wheels releasably attachable to the rearward frame of the bicycle. Training wheels are typically comprised of a pair of smaller wheels positioned a common distance from opposite sides of the rear wheel, and these smaller wheels operate to prevent the bicycle from toppling over while it is being ridden. Tricycles, of course, operate similarly to training wheels, with the exception that there is no rear wheel. The drawback of using training wheels as a teaching method, or tricycles for that matter, is that, although the individual develops steering skills and becomes accustomed to the drive train operation of the bicycle, the individual does not acquire the necessary balancing response which are required once the training wheels are removed. This is generally true because the individual has a tendency to become too dependent on the training wheels to provide balancing. Accordingly, the youngster still has a difficult time operating the bicycle effectively after the training wheels are removed.
Not everyone, of course, had the benefit of learning to operate a bicycle through the use of training wheels or tricycles. Older individuals, or those who simply did not own tricycles when growing up, likely learned to ride a bicycle with adult assistance. For most, this experience was memorable because the individual would mount the bicycle and pedal it while the adult followed alongside providing support to prevent the individual from falling. At some point, though, it would become necessary for the individual to pedal and steer the bicycle free of assistance. Almost inevitably, the individual would fall as he/she began to lose balance because the natural response would be to attempt to counteract the bicycle's movement by turning the steering wheel in the wrong direction. Of course, this only frustrates the learning experience because the individual is forced to overcome natural fears and learn to ride the bike through trial and error.
Accordingly, there remains a need to provide a new and improved method for teaching individuals of all ages the proper skills necessary to ride a bicycle. There is a further need to provide such a method which effectively eliminates much of the fear and anxiety inherent in the techniques which have been widely employed in the past. The methodology taught by the present invention is particularly adapted to meet these needs.